When I look back on the educational process that developed my intellect I am amazed that I did not learn more. I cannot think of one teacher that I had that did not have the capacity to teach me more. Of course the ignorance that precedes knowledge at any level leaves an avenue prepared for celebration and adulation over the fulfillment of new found knowledge. I am sure it is a brain chemistry thing like the binging of the cash register every time a sale is rung up. I do not think I ever recall feeling melancholy or angry over adding the least knowledge to my repertoire. I never demanded that a teacher take it back, that I did not want their knowledge. In today’s education reform efforts however I am filled with angst and tribulation for the young learners as I see their excitement peaked as a conditioned response to a minimalistic advancement of their intellect. In short, America has chosen to create a large undereducated working class of people by not raising the bar but lowering it and indoctrinating students with a new goal to pass closely under it and never above it. America will never again be the world leader in intellect and following that many of the comforts we enjoy as citizens will begin to slip from our grasp as well without a significantly different style of education reform.
On September 11, 1973, in Chile, a powerful dictator named Pinochet overthrew the government in a coup. Among the enactments to secure his hold on the country was to utilize soccer stadiums as detainment centers for anyone he thought might be a political dissenter to his regime. Thousands of educators, and students between the ages of 17 and 35, were specifically targeted, gathered and taken to these centers where they were held indefinitely without proper sanitation or necessary provisions. Many of them succumbed to the conditions and many more were just never heard from again by their families and friends. Pinochet’s intent was to wipe out the possibility of development of intellectual ideas that might be in opposition to his own beliefs. The entire event was watched by the world on television. Yet no other nation stepped in and defended against the atrocious human rights violation occurring. Thousands of teachers and students alike were murdered to increase the probability of success of a new political design in which new expectations of subservience and ignorance were desired for a more manageable population.
The international audience again witnessed another event in China as government military armored tanks rolled over and crushed to death, as well as killed by use of other ordinances, hundreds to thousands of student protestors on June 4, 1989 in what has become known at the June 4th incident or perhaps more appropriately the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Exact numbers of casualties are not known due to the media control in China. This is another example of how a powerful leader, Premier Li Peng, used force to dissuade popular liberal reformers from questioning the resolve of the deeply entrenched communist party.
Many of the great philosophers of old were ultimately put to death by rulers whose grasp on their kingdom was brought into question by new ideas of the free thinkers. Thankfully the advent of the Guttenberg Press began to make knowledge available to the masses in their native languages. The Age of Enlightenment was possible because all people could now lean and elevate themselves for a better life. The Age of Enlightenment brought an end to the oppression of the ignorant by the mighty and religious tyranny by the Inquisition of the Holy Roman Church. Of course, not all societies developed as free or democratic societies and neither did all societies develop as wealthy or powerful centers of commerce or strategic importance. Through the development of the western civilized world The United Sates of America emerged as the world leader in all categories by the middle of the twentieth century. The United States of America became the world leader economically and intellectually and retained that position by giving to the rest of the world, not taking, until within the last two decades. In these past twenty years the United States has slowly deteriorated economically and intellectually to nearly rock bottom when compared to the top 32 developed nations. One thing is certain. Our intellectual growth was directly precipitous of our world superiority. Without enlightened individuals working in a free society The United States could not have been responsible for the advances in economics, agriculture, medical research and many other areas that have brought food, shelter, military support and medical aid to millions of people worldwide.
Somehow in the last twenty years The United States has lost her compass and begun to drift far off course. Most curious is why no one realized that a corrective measure was necessary until the deflection was so great that it might mean the complete overhaul of how we as a society administrate education. Indeed, current thinking, mind you generated from what we now claim has been a failing system of instruction, suggests that the entire approach to “traditional” design education is wrong. Current education philosophy from various think tanks and education research foundations suggests that not only is it wrong but the people involved in it or even thought to believe in its precepts and practices are faulty and suspect of being ineffective by association. Remember Pinochet? “New” design education thinkers believe that traditional design education teachers and administrators are intrinsically flawed and lack the cognitive flexibility to be retrained or redirected to produce the desired results. Therefore we are seeing thousands of teachers and administrators forcefully separated from their careers and in many cases publically identified as ineffective educators who will then have a hard time regaining a career position in their field. Many traditional design career educators had received their education foundation during a period of American history when The United States of America was the world leader in intellect. What better time and place to gain knowledge? For close to a hundred years American public education perpetuated the developmental advantage that made this Nation the pinnacle of success. Every student had the opportunity to learn the most advanced and significant information of the time in order to push forward with inspired thoughts theories and concepts of their own. Traditional design teachers were people who were passionate about educating.
Through years of underpaid tireless work traditional design teachers worked daily to insure a brighter future for every student, many times without sufficient classroom supplies, knowing the result would be a stronger future for the entire society. Teachers have a long history of spending a lot of their own income on providing necessary materials for their students. As the world population began to blossom out of control after WW II so did that of The United States of America. This meant more schools, more school supplies and of course more teachers. As can only be expected industry and business attempted to cream the college and graduate school crops of the best and brightest academic performers with ever escalating salaries and benefits which far surpassed those offered by public education boards. This did not stop many who had a great passion for education from entering that field. A passion to educate over entering another vocation should never be thought to be a failure to succeed in another field or be due to lacking intellect compared to someone else who preferred personal monetary gain. This is not to belittle those for whom maximizing personal income potential, or just being terribly passionate about a different career choice, was more important for each has a role in advancement of society as a whole. Eventually teacher unions became necessary just as unions developed in other industries. Teachers too needed protection in their craft as American society became rougher and more robust. Teacher’s training came largely from academia. Development of their skill was the responsibility of their school administration and of courses their own nature to continue to improve upon their professional self as an effective educator. In education the term tenure means that the teacher has performed satisfactorily by standards set usually by the state for a decided period of time, usually three to five years, and has thereby earned the right to be rigorously protected in their job by a union should the need arise. As teacher salaries and benefits became more competitive the need for protection has also become more important. As more teacher candidates graduate from colleges and graduate schools the opportunity for a school administration to replace a highly paid career teacher with a more cost effective new teacher becomes an increasing threat to the career teacher’s hold on their position. This is where the union support for tenured teachers is so important. As in any other business or industry a school administration is constantly looking to fine line the bottom line. In today’s bad economy that threat is even more ominous.
One interesting phenomenon that has also occurred as a result of the decline of intellect, as a result of progressively degenerated educational practices, in the United States of America is the increasing need for educators in certain content areas like mathematics and science. Seemingly the lack of intellectual expression through the bastions of education over the past twenty years has retrograded mathematical and scientific thinking to the point of creating an absence of advancement in those areas based on original and perpetual thinking rather than merely being able to access retained information from computers deemed correct. Remember the Inquisition?
So here we are declaring that the way we educate is at blame and nothing short of a full scale reform will suffice to correct the matter. Out with the old and in with the new as it were. The biggest problem as I see it is that the new, excuse me, the new?... are, at best, nothing more than the product of the failure to succeed to begin with. Without proper training and oversight how can we expect that, essentially the product of a failing system can be put in charge ahead of the current staff of proven ability for a better outcome? The solution to this puzzle is really quite simple. First we turn our back on the “in place” teachers and administrators. Then we cast them aside when financial and job security is at an all time premium. Next we install Trump Apprentice style young and aggressive administrators with autonomy over vast amounts of school budget money to subjectively hire and fire teachers as they choose. We encourage then to recruit the best and the brightest minds by offering overstated merit based pay opportunities appealing to the greedy and self serving. So, we have demigods in charge of mercenaries. Sounds a bit like a coup to me. Where are the unions? In times of economic uncertainty everyone who wants to keep a job does as the leader demands. It sounds a bit communist to me but I think the unions themselves are trying to promote their best deal too by selling out tenured teachers as long as that commodity still holds value with the reformers. In reality all these new design positions are essentially “at will” or “right to work” without protection and at the complete will of the designers, like plankton in the sea. No doubt the new design teachers and administrators can talk about their passion to teach but in reality they do not have the security to demonstrate it long term. Short term gains for which they can claim success are possible but this is no more sustainable than their longevity, again like plankton.
Especially worrisome is the quandary over areas of need. There is no escaping that there are just not enough really good teachers. Certain subject areas are especially in demand, such as science and mathematics. Other special needs and English language areas are also suffering shortages. I thought I was very secure as a chemistry teacher but found myself displaced by persons actually relocated to the United States from India by my school system. I have been out of work for two years and have learned that my former employer has been using these visiting teachers, teacher interns from the “Corps” and substitutes to teach chemistry as well as other area of need science and mathematics classes. Students in that school system are getting credits toward graduation as college ready product. That’s credits from totally disjointed and unproven teaching practices. There is also a shift in teaching style to a more student directed format and curricula are written in which the teacher is more of a docent standing by while the students explore the subject. That’s really like putting jellybeans and brussel sprouts on a student’s lunch plate and seeing which one disappears first. Learning little due to teaching little gets a high percentage score while learning much of a whole lot gets a somewhat lower score and learning some of a vast amount could be a poor score, but what if the some of a vast amount is more than the all of a little? Strong instructional skills and practices utilized by passionate teachers with strong curricular foundations can produce the best results. As our Nation has declined in its ability to produce a strong intellectual product, over the past twenty years, the numbers of individuals exercising their potential in what have become areas of need in education is resultant of the inability of an educational system to sustain its mission. Therefore the latest products are potentially the most flawed. Not flawed due to personal attributes but certainly flawed in their readiness preparation and their desire to achieve beyond the boundaries. Largely new design educators in mathematics and sciences rely too heavily on a homeostasis of thought brought about by a dependence on technology rather than embracing the creativity of imagination and the natural empiricism that it generates.
In total, the new education reform architects are creating a system that conditions students and their parents to perform on cue and claim success in closing the achievement gap based on subjectivised assessments where the tasks are lowered to the ability rather than the students held accountable to reaching high expectations. The latter is possible and far preferred. It requires an educational design that utilizes the most experienced and the most passionate, the most knowledgeable and the most technological and holds to the standards, privileges and rights all individuals are afford as members of the American society. The hope is education in America can regain its position of world supremacy not as an indictment of lesser nations but because America has the resources to do the most for other nations in need. If the educational product of America fails to sustain itself as the world leader in intellect then the opportunities to utilize the resources of this country will also diminish and like muscles that are not used those resources will atrophy and eventually fail to support the needs of the people. Brussel sprouts may be less preferred than jellybeans but they are far better for you. Being great requires being strong and having faith that what you do is helping others more than yourself. The hope is that America can regain her compass and get back on track providing and producing the world’s greatest education and greatest people to benefit all people.
